It’s December the 24th and we’re feeling festive, so we’re going to write about everyone’s favourite pastime – administration.

In short, we have a demand: all potential cricket administrators should be forced to play four seasons on a cricket management game before they can be considered for any job.

We reached this conclusion after downloading a trial copy of the latest version of what was originally Marcus Trescothick’s Cricket Coach last night. We started a new game, decided to be England and were immediately confronted with a World Twenty20. This caused us to sigh wearily.

This always happens in cricket management games (International Cricket Captain is the other). Basically, the games suffer not because of how they are made, but because of what they are trying to simulate. Turns out managing an international cricket team is REALLY BORING, because you’re forever competing in some no-mark tournament or tri-series that you don’t give a toss about.

If cricket administrators had to play through the repetitive formulaic shenanigans of a five-match one-day tour of India – picking pretty much the same bloody team again and again and adopting the same bloody tactics match after match – they would know not to schedule two such series within the space of 12 months.

When it comes to measuring the sporting value of a fixture, the ‘skip match’ option is a very accurate barometer.

Happy Christmas to those of you who live in a country where that’s meaningful. Have an equally Happy December 25th, the rest of you.

I wasted far too much time on International Cricket Captain. It got to the stage where James Middlebrook started to violate my dreams as my desperate plight to win First Division Championship reached it’s nadir. Rehab has helped.

May the New Year bring us news about more test matches, more fat cricketers, more changes in test rankings than a hollywood actress’ hairdo, and more ferocious new fast bowlers. Let us also hope for less T20 matches that are about as engaging as Nicholas Cage’s acting, less efforts to popularize cricket in the US, and less BCCI.

I have tried “The Snowman and The Snowdog” app today – I must say the game makes my head ache with all that flying around.

Further, I don’t suppose the management choice “fly straight to the North Pole or take the hint from the dog to follow him instead and find the missing nuggets” is quite up there with choosing between picking a virtual Broad and a virtual Bresnan in a virtual T20 international.

How do these mgt games work? You select a team and then sit and watch the game unfold?
My personal high is with EA Sports Cricket, as Tim Bresnan racked up 490 coming in at 88/6, only spoilt by his dismissal at 490, trying to Sehwag his way to a Quintuple Century, leaving Swann stranded at 368*, as Monty fell first ball after that. England’s 1015 all out, batting until the morning of 5th day, was such a triumph of old-fashioned test match virtues.
This was in 2011, just before India’s England tour, and in an eerie portent of what was to come, India then collapsed to 78 all out and 86 allout, leaving England victors by an innings and 851 runs.

I should have sent the screenshot to Dhoni and BCCI, and found a way of cancelling the tour.

In other (real world) news, Mitch Johnson took an unreal haul of wickets on the first day of the Boxing Day test, massively increasing the chance of him being a slam dunk selection for several of the unfeasibly large number of real world Ashes tests this coming year.

I virtually need to go and lie down after writing that convoluted sentence.

I am also looking forward to Jackson Bird touring, with all the “give him the Bird” and “Surfing Bird” crowd business that might entail. He might just knock Mitch into second place in the barracking department.

Of course, if I go to any of the matches with my friend “The Tazzie Devil”, we could also go for the “oy, you looking at my Bird?” line too.